Nearly 40 per cent of hospital infection control experts believe their hospital is not clean enough to prevent spread of the toxic gut infection C. difficile and other potentially lethal organisms, a national survey has found.

About one-quarter million Canadians will be sickened this year with an infection they pick up in hospital, and death rates from highly drug-resistant microbes are rising.

Yet the new survey found that just 62 per cent of lead infection control staff believe their hospital is sufficiently clean.

“We’re just not achieving the results we need,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Dick Zoutman, an infectious disease specialist and professor in the school of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.